[pgpony]
download
// 01_download

PGPony for Desktop.

OpenPGP for macOS, Linux and Windows. Encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify messages and files, manage your keyring, and use a hardware security key over USB — all on device. Linux ships for x86_64 and ARM64, as a .deb, a portable tarball, an AppImage or from the AUR. Like the phone apps: no accounts, no ads, no analytics, no tracking.

Download for macOS (.dmg)
Download for Linux (.deb)
Download for Windows (.msi)
version 1.0.3 released 2026-07-28 runtime bundled licence Apache-2.0
macOS · sha256
b1f0995a51e588c2ed02f19a11f28aea4561c2ff88de02bb6d653d960818b3aa
Linux · sha256
7b41cc1c52854b7c0b97674e2989a99ff3d7826c6f01e9e35d922bfe95dc0a66
Windows · sha256
8697e29489958c01790bf7c306c541d2b9a967d92ccb823433017c0b007737f3
More Linux builds
PackageArchsha256
Debian / Ubuntu (.deb) ARM64 12160ad75891da58a4317935d90492f8c711070fe29b1c05340ded547ffe300e
Portable tarball (.tar.gz) x86_64 f57e2bc40285b223cae5958b5f88f1039213b5728fee262e0e20658712b23167
Portable tarball (.tar.gz) ARM64 c59d4ebee272d96f3937eb9818e182d0951e5183e2211e65cdb9d60b6520abff
AppImage x86_64 b1a172b7e4b18138151eb3c9935b0ec46cc06a26be6b1a5b632ff91293f72043
AppImage ARM64 304b4e81eec60b319931f303ae59bdcd4cc59372536b0a3b9965cced15d4053f
Arch Linux (AUR) x86_64 · ARM64 pgpony-bin

The tarball and AppImage are self-contained and need no install step — extract and run bin/PGPony, or make the AppImage executable and run it. Neither registers file associations, because nothing installs a desktop entry for them; the .deb and the AUR package do.

What's new in 1.0.3.
Linux, broadened.

Linux now ships for ARM64 as well as x86_64, and in three packagings instead of one: the Debian/Ubuntu .deb as before, a portable .tar.gz that runs from anywhere without installing, and an AppImage. Arch users can install pgpony-bin from the AUR.

The tarball and the AppImage carry the same bundled runtime as the installer, so there is still nothing to install alongside them. Neither registers file associations — nothing installs a desktop entry for them — so double-clicking a .pgpony or .asc still needs the .deb or the AUR package.

Also includes everything from 1.0.2: PGPony retries a smart-card call that fails before giving up, and pgpony card-info reports when a retry recovered, so an intermittent hardware-key fault leaves a trace instead of disappearing.
// 02_not_a_rewrite

The same engine your phone runs.

The desktop app compiles the exact OpenPGP engine the PGPony phone apps ship — packet handling, v4 and v6 (RFC 9580) keys, the post-quantum ML-KEM composite layer in both wire formats, the OpenPGP smart-card stack, MIME — on the same Bouncy Castle version.

  • Encrypt, decrypt, sign, verify. Text, files, and PGP/MIME mail bundles, with signature verification banners and never-overwrite outputs.
  • Post-quantum keys. ML-KEM-768 + X25519 composites in both the IETF (v6) and GnuPG/LibrePGP formats — generate, encrypt and decrypt.
  • Hardware security keys over USB. On-card key generation, decrypt, sign, PIN management and factory reset, over PC/SC.
  • Backups that cross devices. Encrypted .pgpony archives restore to and from the phone apps, with a recovery code.
  • Key discovery. WKD, the verifying keyserver and per-server publishing, with optional Tor routing and an onion mirror.
  • Password store. A read-only pass browser with hardware-key entries, an auto-clearing clipboard and live TOTP.
  • A command line. The pgpony CLI shares the app's keyring, streams stdin to stdout, and never takes a passphrase as a plain flag.
  • Six languages. English, Deutsch, Español, Français, 日本語 and Português (BR), switchable without a restart.
// 03_verify

Check what you downloaded.

Every artifact ships with a detached PGP signature, and each release carries a signed SHA256SUMS covering all three. A PGP app should sign its own releases with its own kind of key — this one does, using the NorseHorse release key published on this site and over WKD. 

gpg --verify PGPony-macOS.dmg.asc PGPony-macOS.dmg
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
Where the signatures live. The .asc files and SHA256SUMS are attached to the release alongside the installers, so you can verify before you ever run the thing.
// 04_requirements

What it needs, and what your OS will say.

  • macOS. macOS 11+ on Apple silicon
  • Linux. Debian or Ubuntu, x86-64
  • Windows. Windows 10 or later, x64
  • No Java to install. The runtime is bundled inside each installer.
  • Hardware keys on Linux need the pcscd daemon, which the .deb declares as a dependency and your package manager will pull in.
macOS opens it cleanly. The app is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, with the ticket stapled to the disk image — so it opens without a warning, and without needing a network connection to check.
Windows will warn on first run. The installer is not yet code-signed, so SmartScreen shows an "unrecognized app" prompt — choose More info, then Run anyway. If you would rather not take that on trust, verify the PGP signature and checksum above first. A code-signing certificate is being evaluated.
Linux installs with the dependency. sudo apt install ./PGPony-linux.deb pulls in PC/SC support for hardware keys.
// 05_source

Read it yourself.

The desktop source is published at github.com/norsehorse-dev/PGPonyDesktop under Apache-2.0, alongside the Android app and the shared crypto cores. The OpenPGP engine is vendored verbatim from the Android repository rather than reimplemented, so there is one implementation to audit, not two.